


Said the Spider to the Fly

by Entwinedlove



Series: Bingo Bonanza 2019 [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous Intentions, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Fluff Bingo Quarter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-18 00:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18975634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entwinedlove/pseuds/Entwinedlove
Summary: They say that smell is the sense most closely related to memory.





	Said the Spider to the Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Fluff Bingo](https://fluffbingo.dreamwidth.org/) card #35, Square G5 - Perfume and also [Bucky Barnes Bingo](https://buckybarnesbingo.tumblr.com/) Square K5 - Bucky/Natasha

[ ](https://imgur.com/5A5bxKO)

The smell of wax plants caught in Bucky's nose again.  
  
It was familiar in a way that nothing much else was these days. Nothing besides the feel of a weapon in his hands. It was comforting, like the sensation of being in a well-hidden location high above other people. It promised safety. Or perhaps it was a lure. Bait.  
  
After catching it for the fifth time in the fifth city since Project Insight went down, Bucky felt it must be a trap. Someone was following him. The scent was floral in nature, like wax plants maybe. It would be cloyingly sweet if he caught more than a whiff of it at a time.  
  
Despite its comfort and familiarity, he did not seek it out. He didn't know why that particular smell evoked those feelings, but anyone following the Asset now was not either of those things. He thought perhaps it was a scent that had been mixed into his cryo-chamber when he was meant to wake up. Something to remind his mind what coming in from the cold was supposed to be like.  
  
He was wandering through a conservatory in Prague when he caught the heady scent again. He didn't immediately flee as he typically would. He searched out the plant to confirm that it was indeed hoya. The smell in the conservatory was overpowering. So sweet it seemed to choke him. Black spots danced in the corners of his eyes, and they mixed with fragments of memories of a woman with soft red hair and soul-piercing green eyes.  
  
Green eyes that had seen too much for how young they were. Eyes that had shone with something like confusion at the concept of love.  
  
He fled then, all lost in his thoughts and confused himself.  
  
When he stopped in Bucharest, the scent did not follow him.  
  
The memories did.  
  
The girl's—the woman's—name had been Natalia. He'd trained her. Not to kill so much, she had come to him knowing how to do that, but he had refined some of her techniques. Softened her rough edges. There were other things he'd been asked—or she'd asked for, he couldn't remember—to teach her. He'd done as she'd asked and fallen in love in the process.  
  
She'd had no concept of the notion, repeated words given to her by her original instructors. Love was for children. And when he'd been as tender and as honest as he could be (as a regularly mind-wiped agent could be) she'd looked for lessons and tricks in his words.  
  
When they were discovered there had been a moment right before the electricity rocketed through his brain when he'd smelled the hoya scent of her perfume and thought: Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe she'd been right. Because what good was a love-sick heartbroken assassin? Better to remove her completely, cut her out of his mind like a tumor, than let him worry over it like a wound that wouldn't heal.  
  
The lure had not followed him to Bucharest. He wondered if he'd lost the agent or if they'd decided he wasn't worth the trouble. He'd learned the Avengers were taking the fight to HYDRA. Project Insight's collapse had dragged the shadow organization into the daylight, and now they were scrambling to salvage what they could. Bucky didn't know if he believed in justice anymore, but he did smile whenever he'd hear of another HYDRA nest being destroyed.  
  
After that first onslaught of memories, sparked by the hothouse plant, more and more slotted into place in his mind. The longer he went without the wipes, the more he remembered. There were still blank spots, and he still had bad days where he struggled to remember the basics, rereading the same words in his journal over and over, but they became fewer.  
  
Two years passed. He settled into an old apartment block with even older residents and made himself useful. He helped carry groceries, and they fed him. He helped fix leaky sinks, and they fed him. He helped unclog toilets and haul out the trash, and they fed him. The bunicii of the building adopted him as one of their own. So it was only natural that when a young woman named Elena moved into the building, they tried to play matchmaker.  
  
They were persistent and she was interested, and Bucky felt whole enough to try. She was beautiful, with dark hair and eyes the color of the bluest ocean. The bunicii teased good-naturedly and said they'd make pretty children. She was sweet, and they had common interests. They sat in on date nights and watched bad American movies and good French ones. They went to the market together and helped the neighbors. The bunicii fed her too.  
  
Soon, she moved in with him. That's when he started thinking that what they had was real. Possibly love. It was new and surreal and wonderful. He thought this might be what happiness felt like. It had been so long he wasn't sure anymore. He didn't think it was justice for all the bad things he'd done, but maybe it was justice for all the bad that was done to him.  
  
Then one day he came home from helping one of the bunica carry her groceries up the stairs to find the apartment flooded with the smell of hothouse flowers. His lovely Elena sat on the kitchen table with her legs crossed leaning back on her hands, waiting on him. Except it wasn't her. It was someone else, with red hair and haunting green eyes, wearing her face.  
  
"Hello Barnes," she said in Elena's voice. She smiled with Elena's mouth, plump lips pulling back to reveal her teeth. Bucky blinked. He wanted to look away but couldn't. He thought maybe he was dreaming. He wanted to wake up. "We've got work to do. Do you remember me?"  
  
He wanted to run but could see the gun on the table by her hand. He nodded instead.  
  
"Natasha."


End file.
